In response to several prominent strikes in 1946, the US Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act to regulate unions. President Truman vetos the act, but is overridden by the Senate. The act prohibits the use of union funds for political purposes, introduces a 60-day notice before a strike or lockout, outlaws the closed shop, and empowers the government to intervene against strikes it deems likely to cripple the nation's economy. The act also prohibits employer payments to union officials with certain exceptions such as payments to an employee benefit fund.

Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl successfully sails from Peru to Polynesia on a primitive raft, Kon Tiki, in an effort to prove that the polynesian islands were settled by Native Americans.

A highly publicized investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee into an alleged communist infiltration of the entertainment industry leads to prison sentences and blacklisting for a group of recalcitrant witnesses known as the Hollywood Ten.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who helped save about 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi extermination, allegedly of a heart attack (according to the Soviet government who had imprisoned him for spying in 1944), although he was most likely executed by the KGB.